The airlines are now in the position of having to sleep in the bed that they have made themselves. The Department of Transportation (DOT) in their most recent rulemaking mandated that airline itineraries include the costs for checking luggage associated with the purchased ticket.
The airlines, after claiming that their airfares and fees are fully transparent and they reveal all prices and permutations, now are begging for more time because their baggage fees are too complex to clearly be communicated to passengers.
My, my, my.
For months airlines have claimed that they were as straightforward as needed in letting passengers know all the possible ancillary fees they may have to spend. Now, we are expected to accept that the airline fee information is so dispersed, so complex and so filled with exceptions that airlines can’t serve up the specific fee with a specific itinerary.
Airlines are claiming that the state-of-the-art computer systems that run giant airlines, change airfares at the drop of a hat, coordinate flights, schedule personnel, deal with spare parts across the world and handle accounting for one of the most intricate businesses on the planet, cannot display the costs of luggage on a ticket that has already been sold.
I find that hard to believe. There is at least $3.4 billion in baggage fee income involved here.
I went to the airlines’ own organization that currently dispenses airfares — Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO). It seems like a good place to start since the airlines claim these baggage fees are only the product of the “unbundling” of once-unified airfares. One would think that if the airlines can deconstruct airfares, they can reconstruct them. It doesn’t seem to be rocket science.
It is not. It can probably be done next week, certainly within the month and without a doubt by the time that the DOT rulemaking is supposed to come into effect.
This mandate cannot be fulfilled unless the airlines load the baggage fees into some sort of database that can be accessed from every point of airline ticket sale. Disclosing this data is exactly what the airlines are fighting. They want to keep baggage fees hidden.
Despite the Air Transport Association (ATA) protestations in recent comments filed with DOT and more recent International Air Transport Association (IATA) requests for a delay in the requirements to tell passengers the total cost of air transportation, it seems that they can. The system to solve this problem already exists. Indeed, ATPCO trumpets the robustness and readiness of its Optional Services systems, designed to handle ancillary fees like baggage, seat reservations, early boarding, etc.
With ATPCO’s Optional Services, airlines can promote their à la carte offerings or full service fares in all sales channels and gain new sources of revenue. The industry standard solution for the collection and distribution of ancillary service fees, Optional Services ensures consistent and accurate collection of ancillary revenues, while also providing carriers the flexibility to fully customize and differentiate their supplementary services, such as in-flight meals and early boarding.
Optional Services supports both product and customer segmentation, so you can present your passengers with à la carte choices that tailor the travel experience to their needs, whether they are flying for business or personal reasons. If you are a full-service carrier, you can also use Optional Services to distinguish your offerings in the marketplace by clearly communicating which value-added options are already included in your fares.
The granularity of the ATPCO fee reporting system is amazing. They actually allow visitors to their website to download a pdf file with almost a thousand different fees listed.
According to ATPCO (which is, incidentally, owned by the airlines) letting customers know how much their total cost of travel will be, including airfare and baggage is simple. Their systems to report ancillary fees are ready to go. All that is needed is for the airlines to send the data.
But the airlines won’t do that. They would rather make passengers suffer and continue to surprise them with hidden fees at the airport and every so often while checking in for flights on the Internet.
These ancillary fees are hidden first under several layers and links on the airlines’ own websites and the airlines will not disclose these fees to any travel agent whether it is on a downtown corner, online or at a giant corporation. The result according to an ongoing Consumer Travel Alliance survey is that more than half of U.S. passengers are faced with surprise fees after they purchase their airline tickets.
It is unacceptable.
We all know the airlines are suffering from a crisis of customer service — they just finished at the bottom of the barrel in a major customer satisfaction survey. Plus, a recent Consumer Reports survey highlighted fees as one of the biggest irritants to passengers.
Now, the airlines are faced with a crisis of believability. In the current rulemaking requiring disclosure of baggage fees, the airlines are once again publicly announcing that the problem is too big and complex to solve, while at the same time their own ATPCO is advertising the problem can be solved.
Which airline claim are we to believe?
Interestingly, the big global distribution systems (GDSs) that power local travel agents, online travel agents and corporate travel agents have all announced and have demonstrated to DOT they can solve the problem, but the airlines won’t let them.
Since 2008, when airlines began unbundling airfares, consumers have had to buy their airline tickets with deceptive airfares and hidden fees. Enough is enough.
DOT should insist that the airlines at least figure out a system to distribute the baggage-fee information by this fall in accordance with the latest rulemaking or allow the GDSs to set up the system since the airlines are claiming they are not up to the task.
Next, DOT should move aggressively forward in mandating that airlines release all their ancillary fees so that passengers know the total cost of travel while they are purchasing airlines tickets and so that they have an opportunity to compare prices including baggage fees and seat reservations across airlines.
Consumers are not asking for too much.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
